by RW Krpoun
We were spread out along the long wall that faced the courtyard, and by happenstance the first breach came through next to me: the plaster sudden sagged outward not much above waist height, and then a crazy thrust its head and shoulders through, one or more stones having been pried outwards.
I shot it square between the eyes with the Model 1911 and then stepped forward and grabbed its shirt, holding it in place as its comrades tried to drag it back and free up the hole.
The shirt quickly ripped from my grip but I had bought a couple seconds. Dropping to a knee I shot the next crazy as it bent to enter the hole, and the next one after that. Then hands were gripping the edges of the breach and before I realized what was happening stones on either side were pulled away. I started shooting hands as they appeared, but the hole was twice as big and the crazies were coming again.
Red Hawk joined me, a little faster than accurate in his shooting, but with his help the breach was being held. Then I heard Sibley’s shotgun booming to my left and a moment later Captain’s Mauser to my right, and I knew that things were not going well for our side.
Time passes strangely in a fight; we held those breaches for perhaps two minutes, no more than three at best, dropping more than a few crazies and deluding ourselves into thinking that we were winning. Certainly our stand was giving the riflemen on the roof more time to lean over the barricade and send a bullet into a zombie skull.
Dropping an empty magazine inside my shirt and slotting another home, I checked our flanks and saw a hand punch through the plaster on the short wall to my right. Slapping Red Hawk on the back, I yelled for him to warn Sibley and raced to Captain, releasing the pistol’s slide as I ran.
“They’re through!” I shouted as I slapped him between the shoulder blades, emptying my pistol into the dark hole that suddenly appeared in the wall. “Get up the ladder.”
Captain emptied his Mauser into his breach as I reloaded and then raced for the ladder as I backed towards it, firing into each breach in turn. Red Hawk was already going up the ladder and Sibley, thumbing rounds into his shotgun, was backing towards the ladder. He caught my eye and jerked his head towards the ladder; emptying the M1911, I turned and ran as he opened fire; Captain was already halfway to the trapdoor.
Shoving the empty pistol into its holster I scrambled up the rungs, stopping just short of the ceiling and drawing my Colt. “Sibley!”
He fired a shot, levered, and clicked the firing pin on an empty weapon. Dropping the shotgun he started up the ladder as I shot a crazy scrambling through my breach, hitting it in the chest. Then a muzzle flash flared in the leftmost breach-I returned fire, putting three rounds into the hole. Looking down I saw Sibley falling off the third rung up and landing heavily on his back, blood leaking from his mouth and nose.
Crazies were in the church-I shot one through the head and looked back down, yelling something, I wasn’t sure what. Sibley was long past hearing, however-his unseeing eyes were staring up at the ceiling with no life left whatsoever.
I fired my last round squarely into his forehead; at least they wouldn’t use his body to bolster their damned ranks.
Mac slammed the trapdoor shut as I scrambled onto the roof and began nailing it shut.
“Sibley?” Captain asked tiredly as Nhi hugged me and I hugged her back.
“Gunshot, from the left breach. I put one into his skull after he was gone to keep them off him.”
“Good. He deserved not to be called up.”
“Captain lost two men at his post, the Judge lost one of his boys to a sharpshooter, and Sibley is dead,” Mac advised grimly. “That leaves us four, ten of our original Mexicans, the Judge, and four of his men. There’s no powder for the explosive pots, and the Chinese are low on fireworks. We’ve got quite a bit of handgun ammunition, but rifle ammunition is starting run low.”
“I figure they lost at least a hundred crazies, probably a hundred-twenty, leaving them with that many or a bit less,” Captain observed. “The Judge’s boys picked off at least three Chuj, and I got a handler for sure.”
“So did I,” I nodded tiredly. “But they have the interior of the church.”
“That’s not so bad-the supplies are on the catwalks, and we can move over to the mess hall roof on the east side before they can get the crazies organized,” Captain countered. “They’ll have to go through this all over again.”
“Only with four less rifles and no explosives or much fireworks facing them,” Mac shook his head. “And its about fifty feet from the church to the mess hall at ground level.”
“We have to move,” I headed off the argument. “The mess hall is just a tactical adjustment. It is also the last place we can go.” I checked my watch. “Its not even midnight yet. Seventeen, eighteen, nineteen, twenty, twenty-one, twenty-two, twenty-three, twenty-four, twenty-five, twenty-six. That’s ten full days left in this bastard’s magic period. Brother Paul, how long does he need to perform whatever he is going to perform?”
“I don’t know. A day, perhaps two.”
“So we would have to hold out for eight more days; by midnight or not long after they’ll hit the mess hall and take its interior, too. When the sun comes up the Chuj will start trying to pick us off.”
“Good luck with that,” Captain snorted. “That knife cuts both ways.”
“True. But they’ll have a plan. So far they are doing pretty well, so I expect it will be a good plan.”
“You’re sounding a bit grim, hoss,” Captain drawled.
“That’s because we are losing,” I snapped. “We have hit them with everything we have, and the end result is they are rooting us from one building to the next. We’ve lost a third of our men and we’re low on munitions. We’re playing their game, and they are beating us. It is time to change that up.”
“How to you expect to do that?” Mac asked.
“Brother Paul, you said that the necromancer left the items hidden until the very last minute to avoid contaminating them?”
“Yes.”
“How do they get contaminated?”
“Ah, well, there are various occurrences…”
I interrupted him. “What I mean is how we could contaminate them.”
“Hmmm? What do you mean?”
“I mean that if I was standing next to the sunstone, what would I need to do to contaminate it? You said that if it was contaminated, it wouldn’t be useful, and un-contaminating it would be hard.”
“Hard? Extremely, and time-consuming…I see what you mean,” the short monk sat up straight. “If you were able to affect the ritual purity of the sunstone I seriously doubt that it could be rendered suitable for use in less than two full lunar cycles. Certainly not in ten days.”
“And without the sunstone the entire business falls apart,” Captain grinned. “No point in continuing the attack.” He thought for a moment. “No sane reason, anyway. Who knows what this jasper would do?”
“My first thought would be to kill the necromancer,” I rubbed my scar. “But since we don’t know who he is or what he looks like, the better bet is the ceremonial stuff. A couple of good hands might could sneak over there and stir up some trouble, ritual-wise.”
“Killing the necromancer is more complex than simply a matter of target and bullet placement,” Brother Andrew advised.
“Yeah, I figured. In any case a big rock is easier to find than one man. But what would we need to do when we got there, Brother Paul?”
He had hastily lit a candle and was thumbing through a journal. “This ceremony…I have only vague ideas of what it will be, and know even less about what it hopes to achieve, but what is certain is that it is drawn from the pre-Spanish era. That is why wheels cannot be used to move the most critical items: wheels as transportation did not exist in that culture when their power was the greatest. There are other rules and laws…”
“Just tell us the method, Brother,” I said gently. “We don’t need the ‘why’.”
“Modern interaction,” the monk too
k off his glasses and polished them. “Of the options within our purview that is the best.”
“And that is…”
“To introduce something to the stone that is deeply in opposition to the period of its heyday. The necromancer has managed to re-learn old rituals, but just as they would be used in their day; he has not created anything new.”
“So shoot the stone?”
“That might do some harm, but not sufficiently to fully accomplish your goal. Lead and copper were known to the subjects of that period, and minor damage or physical wear is not sufficient. Fire, on the other hand, is harmful in a ritual sense due to its purgative proprieties. However, fire by itself would not suffice.”
“What about steel? They used stone stuff, right? The knives he needed were volcanic glass,” Mac pointed out.
“Yes, but it would have to be wide-spread and not just casual contact.”
“What about just busting it up-its stone, after all.”
“I expect that it will be a slab of stone more than a foot thick.”
“You have an idea?” I asked Mac.
“Yeah, maybe. There’s a box of tools over there, leather and wood-working tools. What if we hammered narrow chisels and awls into the stone? Those are tempered steel.”
“Knife blades, too. Seth brought back a bunch of bayonets,” Captain pointed out.
“Yes, that would work.”
“What about coal-tar creosote?” Captain asked. “That burns hot and long and while it’s been around I don’t think it has been for all that long.”
“Actually, it was first marketed in the mid-nineteenth century,” Brother Paul said absently. “Yes, that would work, and if you mixed in steel shavings you would have several times the effect.”
“Where are we going to get steel shavings?” Captain asked.
“A file and a revolver barrel,” Mac shrugged. “We’ve got a half dozen spares.”
“So now we just need when to go, and who goes with me,” I said.
“I will go,” Nhi said instantly.
I opened my mouth to argue, then closed it at her look.
“I’m in,” Captain said thoughtfully. “I never killed a stone before.”
“I’m in,” Mac said. “Four should be enough.”
“Should go soon,” Captain glanced up at the sky. “Not much moon, and they don’t have a lot of regular men to spare. It would be easy to miss our preparations and departure in the move to the mess hall roof.”
“Sounds good,” I nodded. “Let’s get started.”
Chapter Sixteen
There had been an old-style sharpening stone, the kind you turned with a foot pedal to make the two-foot stone spin, in the stables when Brother Andrew first took over the place; Mac took two of the Judge’s boys and recovered it, moving on the catwalks to avoid the crazies, not that they had stirred from the church. With it we swiftly ground down the blades of several bayonets into steel powder.
They were out of black powder, but they still had several of the double-walled pots they had used to build the grenades. We filled the inner cell with creosote cut with kerosene, filled the surrounding cell with metal shavings, steel nuts, and steel bolts chiseled into quarter-inch lengths.
Mac, Captain, and I each took a chisel or knife we felt was strong enough, and a hammer; Nhi, though willing, didn’t have the strength of arms to pound one into stone. Each of us took one of the loaded pots wrapped in several feet of fuse, the entire assembly blessed by Brother Paul, who used a Latin cant I don’t recall ever hearing before.
I left my hat and the Krag behind, and took my sap and a .32 Smith & Wesson from the leftover captured gear stuck in the back of my belt, plus my derringer tucked into my left rear pocket. Mac and Captain left their rifles behind; Mac added a bowie that looked like a first cousin to a machete while Captain borrowed the saddle Colt I had inherited from Sibley. Nhi left her Luger pistol but took the Luger carbine, along with the Browning, her sword, and a couple hatchets.
Red Hawk volunteered to come on the mission but I limited his role to guiding us and to watch our effort and report back in case none of us survived. We used tallow and soot to darken our faces, and Nhi exchanged her turban scarf for a black rag; our clothes were sufficiently grimy and carbon-stained to give the enemy no opportunities, although a delicate bather couldn’t possible miss the scent of sweat, gun smoke, and gun oil that hung around each of us.
“Good luck, my friends,” Brother Andrew whispered, using his thumb to draw a cross on each of our foreheads. “May the Lord bless you and keep you safe.”
“You, too, Brother.”
I was the last to go over the wall, being the least graceful. And to be frank, I’m not a fan of climbing or high places-even as a kid I didn’t climb trees. The Judge came over and started digging in a crate next to where I was crouching, waiting my turn.
“You’re crazier than I thought, mi amigo,” he muttered.
“Desperate men do desperate things,” I conceded. “If we don’t make it back, notify the agency.”
“I will. Vaya con Dios.” He hefted the crate into his shoulder and headed for the catwalk.
Red Hawk’s expertise in scouting the area showed: he led us down one irrigation ditch after another until I was pretty well turned around, finally taking a rest stop after a half hour of scuttling like a crippled badger through one muddy slough after another.
“Rest stop,” he muttered. “We cut west, then north, come at them from opposite the presidio.” He cocked his head, listening.
“Chuj?” I asked.
“No. Tobias.”
“Shit.”
“No point in trying to stop him.”
“Keep him with you when we make our move.” The teen’s teeth flashed in a grin. “Yeah, well, try.”
Nhi leaned her head against my shoulder as we sat on the cool ground; I put my arm around her shoulders and looked up at the cloud of stars overhead. It seemed a good time to say a few words for the success of our venture and the condition of my soul, but I left it at a simple thanks. To my way of thinking the Lord does not require detailed instructions nor nagging exhortations. Particularly from the sort of sinner that I have been.
We cut west for about a mile, then headed north about half that distance, until the light of a pair of lanterns lay between us and the presidio. We stopped again while Red Hawk conferred with an Indian boy who materialized out of the darkness like a ghost. I have to say that Scouting business seemed to be working, and I couldn’t help but wonder if it would catch on in the States.
Captain passed around a canteen he had brought while we waited, and I checked my gear, only to discover I had lost the Smith & Wesson someplace, probably back in the ditches. Still, if that was the worst thing to happen to me tonight it would be a pretty good night.
I watched the lantern lights, but at this distance there wasn’t much to see, just the occasion flicker of someone passing between me and the light. There would be sentries, Chuj most likely, and probably the necromancer’s own guards-it stood to reason the man would need guarding.
Red Hawk rejoined us. “There are thirty of the walking corpses and four of the Indios on guard, but no dogs. There are a few other men, but most are asleep. The corpses are in two groups of fifteen between the camp and the presidio. The four guards walk the area in pairs.”
“Not too bad,” Captain observed.
“Thirty’s a bit more than I expected to be held back, given their losses, but I suppose he had to anticipate this move,” I nodded. “Where are the items?”
“There are two, a great stone slab set on boulders, and a stone…bowl, with many decorations, atop a great block of wood; they are on this side of the camp. The four guards keep a close eye on them.”
“A wood block? Like a crate?”
“It is a section of a great tree, easily two feet square.”
“Wood burns,” Mac whispered.
“Just what I was thinking, we can cook that heart-holder like an armad
illo on a pyre,” I said with satisfaction. “Nhi, you go after it while we three get to the big stone and hammer in as much steel as we can before lighting it up. Now, how do we depart the scene of the crime?”
“Every man or woman for themselves,” Captain suggested. “It’s too dark for anything fancy. Once you chunk your pot leg it east, away from everybody, then circle around to the presidio at our own speed. After sun-up would be my suggestion.”
I didn’t like that, but I couldn’t think of a better plan on short notice. “All right.”
“These Chuj jaspers ain’t much on scouting, at least in this terrain,” Captain pointed out, apparently having heard my reluctance in my voice. “And there’s fewer than there was a day ago. They want to chase us in the dark, well, that’s a sure method to have even less when the sun comes up.”
“They’re bound to run out of them sooner or later,” Mac agreed. “Hood’s Brigade came back to Texas with a larger portion than those boys will herd back south.”
“All right, well, lets get this done,” I grabbed Nhi’s hand and squeezed it. It wasn’t the most stirring battle cry, but then we weren’t the sort for grand gestures.
Moving in the dark wasn’t anything new to any of us-as a boy I had spent my summers running amok day and night, and in the Islands we had hunted Moros at night on occasion, and vice versa. You just have to learn to use what light there was, and to rely on your hearing and sense of smell.
The fragment of moon wasn’t real bright, but it dealt out some and the stars chipped in their nickel’s worth, and without a lot of trees around it was sufficient for a careful man to move slowly but steadily.
Red Hawk reluctantly halted a little less than a quarter mile from the lanterns to act as witness and reporter, charged with high-tailing it back to Brother Andrew once the action was done to report on what we had accomplished. I took the lead after he stopped, even though Mac was much quieter than I, because once a sergeant, always a sergeant. I had led them into this mess, so I would lead them on the last hurrah.
